Rupert Neethling and eM&G reporters
The time has come, the walrus said, to think of many things; of POPs and mailbox aliases, and the hassles a computer brings (with apologies to Lewis Carroll).
There has been a dramatic surge of interest in the Internet in South Africa over the past few years. It is becoming increasingly common to see website addresses on business cards and the sides of delivery vans. This rising demand for Internet access has been graphically demonstrated by the quadrupling over the last four years of the number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
The sheer number of ISPs makes it difficult for the aspiring surfer to decide which one to sign up with. Your choice can determine whether you race freely on the information superhighway or merely waddle along expensively in the slow lane.
Perhaps you already have Internet at the office, but want it at home as well. If you have not received great service from your ISP – for example, the modems are busy at 2am on a Saturday morning – you might want to switch to a better operator.
Find the service which is most likely to suit your own needs. The deciding factors could be superior technical infrastructure, the quality of telephonic support, or the initial cost of opening an account.
Most importantly, don’t forget the addictive nature of the Net. Many people who start out believing that they “just want to send e-mail” soon find themselves happily bookmarking favourite websites. So don’t underestimate the amount of access time you’ll end up buying and look at different price packages.
The five largest ISPs in South Africa, listed alphabetically, are Global Internet Access (GIA), Icon, Intekom, M-Web, and UUNet Internet Africa. The table below compares the deals they have on offer.
Many operators offer special features: GIA, for instance, promises its subscribers one month’s free access should they fail to connect due to its modems being busy. All five ISPs offer starter kits and are currently testing the latest, and fastest, modem connections.
Don’t let the sales rep overwhelm you with cyberspeak; use our beginner’s guide to Internet lingo:
Your mailbox is the electronic version of your post office box. Housed on your ISP’s computers, it stores your e-mail until you download it on to your computer, and gives you an electronic identity.
Mailbox aliases allow you to create multiple e-mail addresses which all relate to the same mailbox. If the mailbox assigned to you is [email protected], you can also create [email protected] and [email protected], although all mail to these addresses will end up in the [email protected] mailbox.
Free Web space is the space on the ISP computers where you are allowed to set up your own website. Files that make up a website are very small and you could easily fit a large non-commercial site into 2Mb.
User-to-modem ratio measures how many modems are available for all the ISP’s subscribers to be connected to the Net. If there are not enough modems available, you will end up competing with other subscribers during peak times.
V90 is the emerging standard for “superfast” modem communications. Prior to this, two incompatible standards (V2 and 56kFlex) existed, and not all ISPs supported both.
POP (point of presence) is the local branch of your ISP to which you will be dialling to get connected to the Net. It is essential that you be able to dial your ISP as a local phone call or your telephone bills may increase quite dramatically.
Carry-in: When you carry your computer into an ISP’s offices so they can set you up for Internet access. A more expensive alternative is for them to come to you.
Contact numbers for the big five: GIA: 080 011 4200; Icon: 080 2121 521; Intekom: 080 0111 720; M-Web: 080 0032 000; Internet Africa: 080 0030 002.
M-Web is the majority shareholder in the eM&G
ENDS